


Tomorrow is a long time

by incognitajones



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Jedi Training, Post-Canon, Wee Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:43:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6050329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/incognitajones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Lady Rey isn’t like you and me. She’s never afraid of herself."</p><p>An older and (hopefully) wiser Ben Solo tries to reassure a young student Jedi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomorrow is a long time

Taissu is hiding--again. And because he’s not leading the beginning students through their forms this morning, the responsibility of finding her falls to Ben. 

The young Nautolan isn’t in any of her usual refuges, though, and Ben begins to feel concerned. She is older than most of the students, having survived the first quarter of her life in the pen of an Outer Rim slaver, and while Ben and Rey haven’t probed into the details of her childhood, the outline is as clear as the scars she wears. 

But after three months at the school, they’d believed things had been improving; her nightmares have decreased in frequency, and she’s been taking a more active part in lessons rather than merely observing from the back of the circle. 

In the end, he finds her in the last place he expects--her room in the dormitory block. The students are always offered a choice, and more of them than he’d think choose to share with others; but Taissu had wanted her own. When he knocks softly, she doesn’t turn toward the open door, but the tips of her thick sensory tendrils move as she identifies him. 

“Lord Solo?”

“Yes.” Ben sighs inwardly, but doesn’t correct her form of address this time. There are more important things to worry about. “Is something wrong, Taissu? We missed you this morning.”

Her tendrils hang straight and limp, which Ben has learned is the Nautolan equivalent of hiding one’s face. 

“I have to go.” 

The stool she’s sitting on is the only thing remaining in the room. She’s taken down the hammock and stowed it along with everything else she owns--which isn’t much, mostly a few body wraps--in a bag hanging over her back.

He comes in, leaving the door half-open, and lowers himself stiffly to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her. 

“You can leave whenever you wish, Taissu. But your teachers would like to know whether you have somewhere else to go. And if you can tell me why you want to leave, maybe we can find another way.”

“It would take a long time to explain.” Her head and all her tendrils are turned away from him. “Can I show you instead?”

Ben considers it, but they’ve been trying to encourage Taissu to rely less on the Force for communication. If she really can’t manage to say what she means, he’ll let her show him, but for now… “Try to say it out loud first,” he encourages her. 

She sighs. “You know that you and Lady Rey’s paths through the Way feel very different?”

“I’ve been told so, yes.” Ben carefully restrains all traces of amusement, not wanting Taissu to think that he’s laughing at her instead of himself. “Does that have something to do with why you want to leave?”

“Sort of. But if I can’t show you, I’ll have to use those word pictures Lord Dek is always talking about.”

Ben smiles. “Metaphors are a perfectly acceptable means of communication.”

Taissu’s tendrils begin to coil slowly about her head as she concentrates. 

“You know the stream that runs past the training ground? Lady Rey is just like the water there: strong, fast, clear.” 

Ben smiles again in pleased recognition. Taissu is a very insightful child; she could be great in the Force. He hopes he can help her untangle whatever knot is making her reluctant to learn.

When she doesn’t continue right away, he prompts her. 

“And me?”

Ben knows what he looks like often surprises the students; they’ve seen him in the holos as he was long ago, and more than a few have been confused when they meet a middle-aged man with grey overpowering the black in his braid. He still generally avoids mirrors, but he doesn’t need one to tell him that the older he gets, the more strongly he resembles his father. At least the scar on his face camouflages that to a certain extent.

Taissu thinks for another long moment before speaking again. “You feel like the water farther downstream, where it falls into the pool. Deep and dark, with no way of knowing if it’s dangerous at the bottom.”

Sorrow presses on Ben’s lungs, stealing his voice temporarily. Twenty years of teaching younglings, and still he is never prepared for this moment. 

“If you’re frightened of me, please don’t leave the school on that account. There are other teachers; you don’t have to learn from me.”

“No, no,” Taissu cries out, her tendrils stiff with agitation. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain it with my mouth. _I’m_ like that too. There are bad things inside of me, and I'm scared of them. Sometimes--sometimes I dream about finding the ones who killed my agemates and my progenitors and doing the same thing to them.” Her voice falls so low Ben can barely hear her. "And when I wake up, I feel happy."

Ben sits back and runs a hand over his mouth, trying to think of what to say next. 

“Do you know why we asked you to come to the school, Taissu?”

“Because I might do terrible things if I don’t learn the Way properly,” she whispers, her tendrils writhing around each other. 

“You might,” Ben agrees. “I did. But that’s not why we teach you, or any of the other students.”

She turns fully toward him for the first time since he entered her room, her huge dark eyes reflecting the light. “Then why?”

“We want you to have a choice. The Taissu you become after your time here, whoever she is, will know the Force. She can choose whether or not to use it and how.” He pushes a little closer to her, his joints crackling from sitting on the floor. “I chose the wrong way when I was young. But when I grew older I saw another way, and was able to make a better choice.”

She remains silent. Ben tries to think of something else that might be more reassuring.

“You know, Rey and I made each other a promise once. That if I ever started to do something wrong again, she would… stop me.”

Taissu listens intently, all of her sensory tendrils straining towards Ben like they’re being pulled by a strong current. “Would _you_ do that for me?”

Startled, Ben objects out of instinct. “Wouldn’t you rather ask Rey?”

“No.” Taissu huffs the word out on a single harsh breath. “Lady Rey isn’t like you and me. She’s never afraid of herself.”

“No, she isn’t,” Ben agrees. “I don’t think you need to be either, Taissu. But if it will help you feel safe enough to stay, then yes, I will promise to watch you.”

Nautolans don’t show affection through touch; instead they use pheromones. Comforted, Taissu exudes a warm scent of spice, and Ben sends her a mental wave of pride and approval. 

“I’ll help you hang up your hammock again, and then we can join the others.”

He will never have a child of his own flesh, nor has he ever wanted one; it would be just another chance for the galaxy’s cruel sense of humour to re-open his family’s wounds. But he has a legacy now, in these students, and that is more than he ever expected. 

It is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to englishable for perceptive beta reading!
> 
> I didn’t make Nautolans up; they’re an amphibious species some of whom have been famous Force users. The title was borrowed from a Bob Dylan song.


End file.
